Super Fours

The Super Fours was a women's limited overs cricket competition which was played annually in England between 2002 and 2013, with a break in 2009 and 2010.

Designed to bring together the leading 48 players in English women's cricket, it originally composed solely of a 50-over tournament, but in 2004 a Twenty20 competition was added.

The tournament, which was created to bridge the gap in quality between the Women's County Championship and international cricket, first featured overseas players in 2008, when Australians Alex Blackwell and Leah Poulton were invited to take part.

In the inaugural tournament, a team-building exercise was initially held at Trent Bridge, at which four teams were selected from the 48 players invited.

[1] The batting was led by England team-mates Charlotte Edwards and Claire Taylor, of the Knight Riders and the Super Strikers respectively, who both scored in excess of three hundred runs.

They won three matches, lost two and tied one in the main competition to narrowly finish top of the table,[7] and enjoyed victories over the Knight Riders in the semi-finals and the Braves in the final to win the Twenty20.

[10] While the main tournament retained the same format for 2005, the Twenty20 competition altered slightly, adopting a short round-robin style league.

[19] The Twenty20 competition reverted to its original format of two semi-finals and a final, and was won by the Diamonds (formerly the Knight Riders) who beat the Rubies and the Sapphires on their way to victory.

[20] The Twenty20 competition was abandoned without a match played or a ball bowled in 2007 due to adverse weather conditions during the Whitsun weekend on which it was scheduled.

[23] In 2008, Australians Leah Poulton and Alex Blackwell were invited to compete in the competition, the first time any non-English players had taken part in the tournament.